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My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer 3 weeks ago. Tomorrow she starts her treatment. She's been a wreck ever since the diagnosis. I mentioned a few pages back how a friend of the family manage

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Newest Astro fan was born earlier today at 12:09 am Mez3, holla!

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Dennis Taylor

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47 minutes ago, Wishbone said:

I did. My observations and posts carry enough weight to affect the outcome of games. Time to make some serious side $.

here's how sports works: if it's going the way you want it to- STFU about it, you can only fuck it up.. If you are watching and it's going well, you have to keep watching. If you aren't watching and it's going well, you can't start watching, again because you can only fuck it up. If you aren't watching and it's going poorly, you can start watching because it can only get better.

these are scientifically proven facts      

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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19407

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34 minutes ago, Dennis Taylor said:

here's how sports works: if it's going the way you want it to- STFU about it, you can only fuck it up.. If you are watching and it's going well, you have to keep watching. If you aren't watching and it's going well, you can't start watching, again because you can only fuck it up. If you aren't watching and it's going poorly, you can start watching because it can only get better.

these are scientifically proven facts      

I was out and about all day and wasn’t able to turn on the game the until top of the 8th.  I honestly had no idea Verlander had a no no going until they put up the 3rd no-hitter graphic.  When the third out was made I thought it was a bit odd to celebrate a series win against Toronto like it was the clinching game of the World Series.

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Limp Brisket

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2 hours ago, Dennis Taylor said:

here's how sports works: if it's going the way you want it to- STFU about it, you can only fuck it up.. If you are watching and it's going well, you have to keep watching. If you aren't watching and it's going well, you can't start watching, again because you can only fuck it up. If you aren't watching and it's going poorly, you can start watching because it can only get better.

these are scientifically proven facts      

Fuckin A, that’s man law shit

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Guadaloopy

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28 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

watching the dodgers and yankees the last few weeks, it's pretty clear we're gonna have to do this shit ourselves.

In their last five games, the Dodgers have lost three and had to win two in extras.  CC’s on the IL for the Yankees.  

If the Astros take care of their own business, I have a feeling things will work out favorably.  

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henrygandorf

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17 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

Another thank you to Mr. Anonymous behind us in Central Market who told his wife JV was throwing a no-hitter.  Rushed out and got to hear the 9th.  So awesome!

Though maybe not Robert Ford's best call upon the final out, lulz.

the kalas call on the toro homer was terrible.  it’s like he didn’t see it. 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9789

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Good read in The Athletic

In the ninth inning, Justin Verlander’s fourth pitch to Bo Bichette was a fastball that caught a lot of the plate. It also came in at 96 mph with late movement, which made it very hard to hit.

That fastball is one of the miracles wrought repeatedly by Verlander, still a marvel at age 36. Like him, it is a fiery phenomenon, and like him, it comes with late life.

Bichette is 20, a wunderkind atop the Blue Jays’ batting order. As the pitch reached the plate, his violent swing nearly yanked him out of his shoes. It also caught nothing but air.

The count was 2-2. Verlander, the evergreen Astros ace, could taste it now. Since that walk in the first inning, he had set down 26 batters in a row. If he retired Bichette, he’d have the third no-hitter of his glorious career.

Even with two strikes, the kid’s cocky confidence did not waver.

“I wanted to get him,” Bichette said. “I thought I was seeing the ball really, really well. In that last at-bat, I made some good adjustments. I honestly thought I was going to get him.

“But then, he made a really good pitch.”

After Bichette’s vicious swing, Verlander needed three more pitches to end it. The count went full. Verlander threw another fastball, on the outer half, a little down, at 97 mph. Bichette connected but could not do much with it. He pulled a routine two-hopper to third, where Canadian rookie Abraham Toro, a secondary hero on this day but a hero nonetheless, gathered it in.

Verlander’s thought bubble looked like this: Please be an out, please be an out.

“And then I saw (Toro) kind of catch a seam,” Verlander said. “He kind of like caught under the ball so it was kind of like a Frisbee going over to first base. And I was just like, ‘Please, don’t go over his head!’”

The throw was a little high, no trouble for first baseman Aledmys Díaz.

“Then, as soon as he catches it,” Verlander said, “it’s just — it’s elation.”



Coming out of the bullpen, Houston catcher Robinson Chirinos sensed something special looming. A pitcher can bring no-hit stuff from his warmups into the game and even into the late innings, but no-hitters are quirky things, often determined by providence, often sealed by events out of a pitcher’s control.

But it all starts with the pitcher, of course, and with Verlander, it all starts with his fastball, which is why Chirinos had such a good feeling about Sunday’s start in the Rogers Centre. As they walked in before the first inning, the catcher said, “Hey, J.V., man, your fastball is unbelievable today.”

In the first inning, by Verlander’s admission, his fastball was all over the place. He threw 21 pitches. He walked Cavan Biggio, whose Hall of Fame dad works for the Astros and was in the house. He scattered his pitches to Justin Smoak but struck him out to end the inning.

After that, Verlander made the job look easy. It wasn’t, of course. But the performance he fashioned was a thing of elegance and power. He blew batters away with high heat and he mesmerized them with pitches that darted and dipped into both lower quadrants.

Only one play held a flickering promise for the Blue Jays. It came with two outs in the fifth inning, when Billy McKinney jerked a sharp grounder that Díaz knocked down at first. For an instant, the ball lay free. But Díaz grabbed it and tossed to Verlander covering. The play was not close.

“I think every no-hitter needs something to go your way,” Verlander said. “That was a pretty poor pitch that was hit pretty hard, fortunately on the ground. A.D. over there is a great athlete and was able to knock it down and make a great play.”

The play was not so hard. With a no-hitter in the balance, it simply felt huge.

After that, each pitch that Verlander threw felt like destiny drove it. He was surgical and dominant and masterful. Whatever superlative you choose simply falls short.

He struck out 14 batters, including four of the last six. He coaxed 23 swinging strikes. He averaged 95 mph with his heater and was still pumping 97 to Bichette in the ninth. He threw 120 pitches and looked like he could’ve thrown 120 more.

He became the sixth pitcher to record three no-hitters. Yes, he said, he knew of the company he now keeps, alongside Cy Young, Bob Feller, Larry Corcoran, Sandy Koufax (4), and Nolan Ryan (7). He knew because he had come so close before, twice losing a no-no in the ninth and twice in the eighth, and people kept reminding him about those guys.

He also no-hit the Jays in 2011. No one had ever pitched a no-hitter twice in the same venue.

During a no-hitter, a stadium becomes a living, breathing organism. Often, fans on the losing side let their love of the game swing their emotions toward history. So it was Sunday.

Except that for eight taut innings, there was no losing side. This, oddly enough, was a bullpen day for the Blue Jays, and for eight innings, Houston’s sovereign and Toronto’s commoners battled to a stalemate on the scoreboard, although in reality, Verlander’s command was absolute.

There came a moment in the seventh when he found himself in a conundrum. Biggio, known for his remarkable eye, led off. The count went full.

“It’s a sticky situation there because it’s a zero-zero game,” Verlander said. “So can I throw a chase pitch maybe, to preserve the no-hitter? But at the same time, we’ve got a ballgame that we’re trying to win here. I ended up executing a fastball down and in to him that froze him. He’s a tough guy to get to chase the ball anyway.”

The pitch was the seventh of the at-bat. It was on the inner edge. It might have missed the zone by a little bit. But when Justin Verlander is pitching a no-hitter and dotting the edges all day, you can’t take that pitch. Of course, on a pitch like that, sometimes your mind is saying do and don’t at the same time.

The crowd began to inhale the inevitability in the eighth inning. That, too, is when Verlander said his thoughts of a no-hitter became “very prevalent.”

Rowdy Tellez went down on three pitches, the third one a four-seamer that barely clipped the strike zone, down and in. Randal Grichuk walked away shaking his head, having whiffed on a heater, the fourth in a row he saw in that at-bat, Verlander’s 100th pitch. Then McKinney took a curveball for strike three, a gorgeous pitch that nipped the zone in the same spot Verlander had hit for his strikeout of Tellez.

After eight, Verlander was way ahead of the Blue Jays. On the scoreboard, it was 0-0.

On Saturday, closer Ken Giles had pinned back the ears of his former team with a three-strikeout ninth inning that saved a Toronto win. He had not pitched on back-to-back days since early July, but under the circumstances Sunday, there was little doubt that manager Charlie Montoyo would summon him.

Alex Bregman led off with a pop-up that fell into no man’s land behind first base for a double, but Giles retired the next two batters. Up stepped Toro, 22, a Quebec native playing his eighth game in the majors.

Toro was not in the original lineup. A flock of family and friends were on hand for his start Saturday, but only five friends stayed for Sunday’s game. Then, an hour before first pitch, Yuli Gurriel was scratched with left elbow bruise, suffered Saturday when he was hit by a pitch, and the rookie got the call.

Toro had struck out twice and hit a long fly-ball out before the ninth. On his third pitch, Giles threw a heater, a little up and a little in, and Toro whacked it over the left-field wall. After he circled the bases, he said, “the whole dugout was going crazy.”

“I could not be happier for that kid,” Verlander said.

When Toro met reporters afterward, he couldn’t stop smiling.

“Unreal,” he said. “First no-hitter. First time playing in Canada as a professional. It was something I’ll remember forever.”

During the three-game series, Toro was in heavy demand on Toronto’s interview circuit.

“I know he wanted to do really well here,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s gotten as much attention in these three days as he’s gotten in his entire career. To do it in front of family and friends in a park that he’s been to before but not as a big-leaguer was pretty awesome.”

Verlander greeted Toro in the dugout with a hug. In keeping with the tradition of no-hitters, Toro said nothing.

“I tried to not even look at him,” he said.

Any no-hitter is special. If there’s such a thing as an extra-special no-no, Verlander intimated that Sunday’s met the criteria. His return to dominance in Houston has been well-documented, but Sunday’s game may have lifted him to a new plateau.

“It’s been a long process for me to get back to being the kind of pitcher I wanted to be,” he said. “That last one in 2011 was kind of at the height of my pitching as a young man. Then ’11, ’12 went well, and ’13, ’14, I had some injuries plagued me a little bit.

“The process of coming back is not easy. I talk about (the support of) my family. They know how much hard work I’ve put in behind the scenes, and I think that’s one of the things they’re most proud of … because nobody really gets to see that work effort. To have it come together on a day like this, and really the last couple of years, it’s special. You hate to work that hard and have it not work out.”

He first called his wife, Kate Upton, then other family members. They reminded him of all that hard work he mentioned. He needed no reminders, but it was good to hear.


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As his manager spoke postgame, Verlander’s behind-the-scenes work was also on his mind.

“It’s pretty awesome to watch him continue to evolve, to continue to want to learn and grow and get better,” Hinch said.

And Chirinos was thinking about the same things.

“It’s no secret, it doesn’t come easy,” the catcher said. “He really works hard. He spends a lot of time in the video room to get to hitters’ weaknesses. He’s unbelievable. He’s just getting better.”

Before Bichette came up in the ninth, Chirinos and Verlander chatted at the mound. They knew that with two strikes, Bichette abandons his leg kick, keeps his front toe down and shortens his swing, the better to make contact. Verlander wanted to make sure Bichette didn’t wait until a two-strike count.

Chirinos recalled what Verlander said: “If you see him doing it early, let me know ’cause I don’t want him to get a hit.”

Bichette didn’t do it early. He didn’t get a hit. No one did. On this Sunday, no one had a prayer

 

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runthebone

runthebone 8322

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33 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

Good read in The Athletic

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In the ninth inning, Justin Verlander’s fourth pitch to Bo Bichette was a fastball that caught a lot of the plate. It also came in at 96 mph with late movement, which made it very hard to hit.

That fastball is one of the miracles wrought repeatedly by Verlander, still a marvel at age 36. Like him, it is a fiery phenomenon, and like him, it comes with late life.

Bichette is 20, a wunderkind atop the Blue Jays’ batting order. As the pitch reached the plate, his violent swing nearly yanked him out of his shoes. It also caught nothing but air.

The count was 2-2. Verlander, the evergreen Astros ace, could taste it now. Since that walk in the first inning, he had set down 26 batters in a row. If he retired Bichette, he’d have the third no-hitter of his glorious career.

Even with two strikes, the kid’s cocky confidence did not waver.

“I wanted to get him,” Bichette said. “I thought I was seeing the ball really, really well. In that last at-bat, I made some good adjustments. I honestly thought I was going to get him.

“But then, he made a really good pitch.”

After Bichette’s vicious swing, Verlander needed three more pitches to end it. The count went full. Verlander threw another fastball, on the outer half, a little down, at 97 mph. Bichette connected but could not do much with it. He pulled a routine two-hopper to third, where Canadian rookie Abraham Toro, a secondary hero on this day but a hero nonetheless, gathered it in.

Verlander’s thought bubble looked like this: Please be an out, please be an out.

“And then I saw (Toro) kind of catch a seam,” Verlander said. “He kind of like caught under the ball so it was kind of like a Frisbee going over to first base. And I was just like, ‘Please, don’t go over his head!’”

The throw was a little high, no trouble for first baseman Aledmys Díaz.

“Then, as soon as he catches it,” Verlander said, “it’s just — it’s elation.”



Coming out of the bullpen, Houston catcher Robinson Chirinos sensed something special looming. A pitcher can bring no-hit stuff from his warmups into the game and even into the late innings, but no-hitters are quirky things, often determined by providence, often sealed by events out of a pitcher’s control.

But it all starts with the pitcher, of course, and with Verlander, it all starts with his fastball, which is why Chirinos had such a good feeling about Sunday’s start in the Rogers Centre. As they walked in before the first inning, the catcher said, “Hey, J.V., man, your fastball is unbelievable today.”

In the first inning, by Verlander’s admission, his fastball was all over the place. He threw 21 pitches. He walked Cavan Biggio, whose Hall of Fame dad works for the Astros and was in the house. He scattered his pitches to Justin Smoak but struck him out to end the inning.

After that, Verlander made the job look easy. It wasn’t, of course. But the performance he fashioned was a thing of elegance and power. He blew batters away with high heat and he mesmerized them with pitches that darted and dipped into both lower quadrants.

Only one play held a flickering promise for the Blue Jays. It came with two outs in the fifth inning, when Billy McKinney jerked a sharp grounder that Díaz knocked down at first. For an instant, the ball lay free. But Díaz grabbed it and tossed to Verlander covering. The play was not close.

“I think every no-hitter needs something to go your way,” Verlander said. “That was a pretty poor pitch that was hit pretty hard, fortunately on the ground. A.D. over there is a great athlete and was able to knock it down and make a great play.”

The play was not so hard. With a no-hitter in the balance, it simply felt huge.

After that, each pitch that Verlander threw felt like destiny drove it. He was surgical and dominant and masterful. Whatever superlative you choose simply falls short.

He struck out 14 batters, including four of the last six. He coaxed 23 swinging strikes. He averaged 95 mph with his heater and was still pumping 97 to Bichette in the ninth. He threw 120 pitches and looked like he could’ve thrown 120 more.

He became the sixth pitcher to record three no-hitters. Yes, he said, he knew of the company he now keeps, alongside Cy Young, Bob Feller, Larry Corcoran, Sandy Koufax (4), and Nolan Ryan (7). He knew because he had come so close before, twice losing a no-no in the ninth and twice in the eighth, and people kept reminding him about those guys.

He also no-hit the Jays in 2011. No one had ever pitched a no-hitter twice in the same venue.

During a no-hitter, a stadium becomes a living, breathing organism. Often, fans on the losing side let their love of the game swing their emotions toward history. So it was Sunday.

Except that for eight taut innings, there was no losing side. This, oddly enough, was a bullpen day for the Blue Jays, and for eight innings, Houston’s sovereign and Toronto’s commoners battled to a stalemate on the scoreboard, although in reality, Verlander’s command was absolute.

There came a moment in the seventh when he found himself in a conundrum. Biggio, known for his remarkable eye, led off. The count went full.

“It’s a sticky situation there because it’s a zero-zero game,” Verlander said. “So can I throw a chase pitch maybe, to preserve the no-hitter? But at the same time, we’ve got a ballgame that we’re trying to win here. I ended up executing a fastball down and in to him that froze him. He’s a tough guy to get to chase the ball anyway.”

The pitch was the seventh of the at-bat. It was on the inner edge. It might have missed the zone by a little bit. But when Justin Verlander is pitching a no-hitter and dotting the edges all day, you can’t take that pitch. Of course, on a pitch like that, sometimes your mind is saying do and don’t at the same time.

The crowd began to inhale the inevitability in the eighth inning. That, too, is when Verlander said his thoughts of a no-hitter became “very prevalent.”

Rowdy Tellez went down on three pitches, the third one a four-seamer that barely clipped the strike zone, down and in. Randal Grichuk walked away shaking his head, having whiffed on a heater, the fourth in a row he saw in that at-bat, Verlander’s 100th pitch. Then McKinney took a curveball for strike three, a gorgeous pitch that nipped the zone in the same spot Verlander had hit for his strikeout of Tellez.

After eight, Verlander was way ahead of the Blue Jays. On the scoreboard, it was 0-0.

On Saturday, closer Ken Giles had pinned back the ears of his former team with a three-strikeout ninth inning that saved a Toronto win. He had not pitched on back-to-back days since early July, but under the circumstances Sunday, there was little doubt that manager Charlie Montoyo would summon him.

Alex Bregman led off with a pop-up that fell into no man’s land behind first base for a double, but Giles retired the next two batters. Up stepped Toro, 22, a Quebec native playing his eighth game in the majors.

Toro was not in the original lineup. A flock of family and friends were on hand for his start Saturday, but only five friends stayed for Sunday’s game. Then, an hour before first pitch, Yuli Gurriel was scratched with left elbow bruise, suffered Saturday when he was hit by a pitch, and the rookie got the call.

Toro had struck out twice and hit a long fly-ball out before the ninth. On his third pitch, Giles threw a heater, a little up and a little in, and Toro whacked it over the left-field wall. After he circled the bases, he said, “the whole dugout was going crazy.”

“I could not be happier for that kid,” Verlander said.

When Toro met reporters afterward, he couldn’t stop smiling.

“Unreal,” he said. “First no-hitter. First time playing in Canada as a professional. It was something I’ll remember forever.”

During the three-game series, Toro was in heavy demand on Toronto’s interview circuit.

“I know he wanted to do really well here,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s gotten as much attention in these three days as he’s gotten in his entire career. To do it in front of family and friends in a park that he’s been to before but not as a big-leaguer was pretty awesome.”

Verlander greeted Toro in the dugout with a hug. In keeping with the tradition of no-hitters, Toro said nothing.

“I tried to not even look at him,” he said.

Any no-hitter is special. If there’s such a thing as an extra-special no-no, Verlander intimated that Sunday’s met the criteria. His return to dominance in Houston has been well-documented, but Sunday’s game may have lifted him to a new plateau.

“It’s been a long process for me to get back to being the kind of pitcher I wanted to be,” he said. “That last one in 2011 was kind of at the height of my pitching as a young man. Then ’11, ’12 went well, and ’13, ’14, I had some injuries plagued me a little bit.

“The process of coming back is not easy. I talk about (the support of) my family. They know how much hard work I’ve put in behind the scenes, and I think that’s one of the things they’re most proud of … because nobody really gets to see that work effort. To have it come together on a day like this, and really the last couple of years, it’s special. You hate to work that hard and have it not work out.”

He first called his wife, Kate Upton, then other family members. They reminded him of all that hard work he mentioned. He needed no reminders, but it was good to hear.


Kate Upton
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As his manager spoke postgame, Verlander’s behind-the-scenes work was also on his mind.

“It’s pretty awesome to watch him continue to evolve, to continue to want to learn and grow and get better,” Hinch said.

And Chirinos was thinking about the same things.

“It’s no secret, it doesn’t come easy,” the catcher said. “He really works hard. He spends a lot of time in the video room to get to hitters’ weaknesses. He’s unbelievable. He’s just getting better.”

Before Bichette came up in the ninth, Chirinos and Verlander chatted at the mound. They knew that with two strikes, Bichette abandons his leg kick, keeps his front toe down and shortens his swing, the better to make contact. Verlander wanted to make sure Bichette didn’t wait until a two-strike count.

Chirinos recalled what Verlander said: “If you see him doing it early, let me know ’cause I don’t want him to get a hit.”

Bichette didn’t do it early. He didn’t get a hit. No one did. On this Sunday, no one had a prayer

 

I was wondering what he and Chirinos were talking about before the final out.  I figured it wasn't who was going to jump into whose arms.

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